Good, but not good enough

BACK in 2010, the then newly-elected coalition Government had a clear-out of arms-length public sector agencies.

They had flourished in a booming economy under Labour, but the coalition decided our poverty-stricken economy could no longer afford them.

So, out went the East Midlands Development Agency, a £150m-a-year body which had tried to apply some strategy to pump-priming the regional economy.

Not many tears were shed by the public, which probably didn't know much about it. But there were a fair few senior figures in business who worried that dumping a body able to rise above local turf wars and make decisions about economic investment based on the big picture of the East Midlands economy was throwing the baby out with the bath water.

Government relented, sort of. It set up Local Enterprise Partnerships in the hope of bringing businesses and councils together to drive economic growth. To begin with, it didn't have a budget or much in the way of staff.

Since one of the most important maxims in business is "follow the money", not a lot of following took place with the LEP for Notts and Derbyshire. Businesses just weren't interested in a body which looked like a talking shop and not much else.

Government then found a way of channelling money through them, whether it was initiatives like the multi-billion Regional Growth Fund or European funding.

Interest started to perk up. Specific streams of cash were available for businesses with promising plans for growth. And our LEP – known as D2N2 – was given responsibility for managing Nottingham's Enterprise Zone.

Then Government set up another big pot of money (anyone would think an election's on the horizon). Working with councils who had projects that would kick-start further economic development, D2N2 put in bids for enormous sums.

As we learned the other week, it has now secured some enormous sums of money. Over the next six years or so, it'll get upwards of £170m. It's reckoned that will unlock £300m-odd from the private sector.

So that's half a billion to play with, a lot of money to follow. And the following is well under way, with getting on for 200 people turning up to D2N2's annual meeting.

Peter Richardson, the plain-speaking chairman of D2N2, said something else: it's not enough. Right now, the region we're part of is the fastest growing outside London, and if it makes sense to pour gazillions of money down the capital's throat then so sustained, large-scale investment in our neck of the woods does too.

£500m of investment is good. But we're Nottingham, we're a city, we're fast-growing. And it's not – yet – good enough.